What’s a girl to do when she sees a bunch of beautiful chives in the market? She buys them and then wonders what a girl to do with a bunch of beautiful chives!

So, what’s a girl to do with a bunch of of beautiful chives now that she has them, you might ask. Well, she’d be asking the same thing, only this girl asked her good friend, the esteemed litgeek merlusyne , and the all mighty google.

The results were two kitchen adventures into ‘stuff we don’t usually do at home’.

The first is a fried prawn dumpling, which I may or may not write about in the future. Which works to some extent. Got the recipe from litgeek for the batter, which may I humbly say, is really awesome! Even for a hopeless cook like me who can’t fry anything without it being soggy, oil-logged, or black cinder.

Note to self: Find a significant other who can fry anything and make it turn out heavenly.

The second kitchen adventure is my favourite breakfast, teatime snack, tim sum. Chives dumpling is a largish steamed dumpling with whitish or translucent skin and chives filling.It’s a version of chaikoay (vegetable dumpling) and the name depends on the fillings. There’s the jicama bangkuang version, which my brother likes, but not me. It’s sweeter rather than savoury since bangkuang is a sweetish, juicy kind of turnip. There’s mention of yam version too, but I’ve never tried it.

After some consultation with the oracular google, I’ve based my recipe on http://cornercafe.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/koo-chai-kuih/. However, I prefer a closer to my hometown version and I don’t keep lots of diff cooking materials (flour and stuff) at home, so some modifications are inevitable.